Reclamation

This post constitutes my (for the moment anyways) closing thoughts on the Game debate. Deep Strength has given his own, which you can find here. I am prompted to write this because of the following comment left by Novaseeker over on Dalrock’s blog:

As far as I can tell there are three main perspectives that are coming out of this discussion so far:

1. Game is a tool which can be used for good or ill, and can be a practical help for men in pursuing Christian relationships (i.e., marriage). Joseph of Jackson, Hawaiian Libertarian, Deti, Dalrock (I think?), Slumlord (and me).

2. Game is bad for Christians because it was developed by immoral people to further their immoral acts.. Further, it isn’t needed because the bible has all the information you need in order to learn how to attract a mate and maintain a healthy relationship with them. Cane, Donal, Northerner, Elspeth (1/2).

3. Game is morally illegitimate in its provenance and also superfluous because it teaches nothing new. But neither is the Bible a manual of female sexual psychology and inter-sexual attraction. Rather, what you need to do is free yourself of the cultural assumptions arising from living in a liberal democracy, and then figure it out. It’s not hard to just figure it out — and if it’s hard for you, there’s really a lot more wrong with you than we can mention in a blog post. Zippy, SSM, Elspeth (1/2).

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While I understand that Novaseeker was using broad strokes when he categorized everyone, I think his assigning me to category 2 is a mistake. Of course,  my posts on the matter have been less than clear (You can find them here, here and here). So it is entirely understandable that he might be confused about my position. I guess that I would fall into the middle ground between 1 and 2. To clarify things a bit:

• I don’t think that the Bible has everything a man “needs” to find, attract and keep a good mate. I think that may be Cane’s position, but I will let him speak for himself on that.
• My concerns about Game are not so much centered around the fact that evil people created it (and yes, the PUAs are evil). Or that they created it for evil purposes. After all, God can turn evil towards good.

As Cane himself has noted, in the past a lot of the knowledge and skills needed to find, attract and keep a good mate were things that a man could count on his father and other male relatives teaching him. Unfortunately that skill and knowledge has mostly been lost over the past few generations, and even worse, many men grow up without a father or other strong, positive male relatives. Those ancient conduits of understanding have been denied to several generations of young men, who are thrust out into a world that often gives them false teaching instead. The Bible only tangentially addresses these points, in large part because the way marriage was entered into in most of the Bible is vastly different than it is now.

Given all of this, it is important to try and replace that lost knowledge and repair the damage done. Some say that Game is the fix. Others say it isn’t.  My argument is that Game is a partial and problematic solution. For one, much of Game’s tools and knowledge are geared towards STRs, not marriage. Some of it does work there, but not all. In addition, a man who starts to use Game can, if he is not careful, come to adopt Game. As Deep Strength has noted, part of the problem with analyzing Game and Christianity is how people approach the matter. One approach advocates grabbing individual tools and them adding them into an existing  framework. This is using Game. Christian men can grab some of the tools and use them safely. Joseph of Jackson has done so with considerable success, and even I have done this. The other route is to take Game, the whole framework of it, and then try and “Christianize it.” This is adopting Game.  I think this is a huge error, because a man without a strong moral/ethic framework and without a lot of wisdom runs the risk of having the secular aspects of Game overcome him. It puts his soul at risk.

[This paragraph was not in the original version posted, but added from a version which was never uploaded] Something worth covering real quick is the idea of Game as a toolbox. Even if one accepts this analogy, keep in mind that a tool is not useful without instructions. The truth is that Game isn’t merely a set of tools, but a set of tools plus instructions. Now, a tool might be morally neutral, but instructions are another matter entirely. After all, they teach you how to use something, and that necessarily implies a moral choice on how that something will be used. Either one learns to use it for good, or for evil. The parts of Game that concern me are those instructions, because learning how to use things like Agree and Amplify is about more than just knowing what they are. I guess what I am trying to say here is that when a guy learns how to use the various tools that Game artists teach, they pick up (pun intended) a lot more behaviors and mental processes than they realize.

Recognizing this and other pitfalls, my goal (and that of several other bloggers like Chad and Deep Strength) has been to create the “alternative” to Game that Free Northerner asked for. Right now a Christian man really has no place to learn any of this, aside from Game, if he didn’t learn it growing up. I (we) aim to change that. A simple explanation is that we are setting about creating an entirely different set of instructions for a different toolbox in order to create something new restore something old. Some of the tools inside this book might be familiar to Game advocates, and others might be new (or old).

I see myself, and the other men working on this project, as following in the tradition of Ezra and Nehemiah. We don’t intend to stand on the shoulders of Heartiste and Roosh. Instead, we are working to rebuild and reclaim what was destroyed and lost over the course of the last few generations. Along the way we will look over our shoulders at the Game advocates, to see what they are doing and to glance at their schematics. Anything of value that can be used ethically we will reverse engineer and integrate into our structure. When we are finished we won’t have to debate the morality of using Game, because we will no longer need it.